Lancaster University Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language

CLSL
Centre for Language in Social Life http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/groups/clsl/home.htm Working Papers Series
http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/pubs/clsl/wpapers.htm

Working Paper No. 119

Diglossic past and present lexicographical practices: the case of two Greek dictionaries
by Assimakis Tseronis

2002

All rights reserved. This document is placed on the Internet solely in order to make it freely available to the wider research community. Any quotation from it for the purposes of discussion must be properly acknowledged in accordance with academic convention. The reproduction of any substantial portion of this document is forbidden unless written permission is obtained from the author. The use and reproduction of this document and any part of it is protected by the international laws of copyright.

2002 Assimakis Tseronis

Editorial address: Centre for Language in Social Life Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language Bowland College, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YT United Kingdom

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 2 I. DIGLOSSIA: PAST & PRESENT 3 DIGLOSSIA & DICTIONARIES IN THE PAST 3 THE DEMOTICIST MOVEMENT 6 THE SITUTATION FROM 1976 ONWARDS 10 II. THE DICTIONARIES 13 Purpose: 14 The number of entries: 16 Collection of facts of usage: 16 Choice of vocabulary: 18 Stylistic Labelling: 20 Phonology - Morphology: 22 Etymology: 24 Spelling: 27 FINAL REMARKS 28 CONCLUSION 30 REFERENCES 32 APPENDIX 1 NOTES 2

INTRODUCTION The constitutional establishment of Modern Greek Demotic as the official language of the Greek State since 1976, could not extinguish completely the traces or the effects of the diglossic past of Greece. Speakers still use purist forms together with Demotic ones interchangeably and unconsciously, whereas scholars still argue about the nature of the language spoken today. Throughout the whole period of diglossia (Ferguson 1959, Browning 1982) and even earlier, dictionaries were compiled in an attempt to reflect the synchronic state of Greek in each time. Actually, what lexicographers did, either consciously or unconsciously, was to describe and reflect language under the prism of their own ideologies and the current political aspects of the language question, choosing therefore to include or to leave out vernacular forms. In this paper I will examine the echo of the diglossic past and of the language question as reflected in the two most recent and authoritative dictionaries, published by lexicographers who come from the two academic institutions that were most engaged in the language debate: the Dictionary of Modern Greek Language (DOMGL), by G. Babiniotis, Professor in Linguistics at Kapodistrian University of Athens, and the Dictionary of Common Modern Greek (DOCMG), by a team of lexicographers working in the Manolis Triandafilidis Foundation of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. In the first part of the paper I will give a brief historical background on Greek diglossia, by relating it to the social changes and the political ideologies prevailing at the time. Throughout, I make reference to the most important and influential dictionaries published each time. In the second part of the paper I will deal with the description and comparison of the two dictionaries, in detail. Bearing in mind the

different ideological standpoints of the lexicographers, I will try to show how their programmatic statements do or do not apply to the actual treatment of the entries, as far as the choice of vocabulary, the phonological and morphological variables, and the etymology and spelling are concerned. The analysis will show that the two dictionaries present a different and conflicting image of the synchronic state of Greek, which indicates that twenty four years after the 1976 Reform, the standardisation process is not over yet. I. DIGLOSSI A: P AST & P RESENT

DIGLOSSIA & DICTIONARIES IN THE PAST Greek diglossia and the language question date back from the end of the 1st
century BC (Browning 1982, Christidis 1996). Atticism was an aesthetic and defensive purist movement (Thomas 1991), which reacted against the vulgarisation of the language due to the Roman influence, and the adulteration of Hellenistic Koine, which was used as a lingua franca among peoples whose native language was not Greek (Alexiou 1982). The Byzantine Empire (324-1453 AD) inherited this diglossic situation. During that period dictionaries in the form of thesauri were compiled in a conscious attempt by scholars to safeguard and perpetuate the high and pure language of their ancestors. Under the Ottoman Empire (1453-1821) the linguistic situation in each part of Greece differed greatly according to the prevailing political situation at each stage. In places like Crete, Corfu and Cyprus, which were under Venetian domination, local dialects were mixed with foreign elements to produce a new vernacular used in literary texts. In places under the Ottoman yoke there was no literary production to elaborate the language used at the time. Greek scholars in European countries, as well as the Orthodox Patriarchate used a classicising literary language which rejected any

colloquial features and varied according to the proficiency of each speaker in using the ancient Greek Attic dialect (Browning 1982, 1983). The first dictionaries to describe the Greek language in modern times appeared in the 17th century and were all published in Western Europe by clergymeni. They included archaic and learned words together with some vernacular ones, but the definitions were given in Latin, Italian or French. The lack of any monolingual dictionary and the prevalence of archaic or ancient words attest the dominance of the classical, atticist tradition. During the Enlightenment (1750-1821) the language question is for the first time officially related to the question of national identity and the fight for independence from the Ottomans. The Greek scholars were divided into two opposing campsii. On the one side were the scholars who believed that the regeneration of the nation would only be guaranteed by the archaisation of language. They proposed the adoption of Attic Greek vocabulary and morphosyntax, in a way that would explicitly mark the bonds of the new-born State with its glorious past (Alexiou 1982, Liakos 1996). On the opposite side were intellectuals who proposed the use of a language close to the vernacular spoken by lay people (demos> Demotic). They argued that the only way to achieve national homogeneity and emancipation from the Ottoman domination was to educate people in a common language, intelligible to all, that is their native language. In between the two extreme positions, Adamantios Korais (1748-1833) proposed the middle way option, by creating a purified language, Katharevoussa (Liakos 1996). Following a reformist purism (Thomas 1991), he proceeded with the eradication and replacement of as many foreign words as possible (Turkish, Albanian, Slavic, and other). Demotic vernacular forms, which he considered to be vulgar, were

also excluded. He replaced foreign words with Greek equivalents, either by reintroducing and expanding the meaning of words that already existed in Ancient Greek or by coining new ones based on ancient forms (see Petrounias 1997 on loan translations). He emphasised the relationship between language and national identity focusing on the continuity of Greek language from antiquity till the modern times. He was the first Greek scholar to promote the compilation of a dictionary as a means of the codification and propagation of the purified language so that it be used by all speakers in all registers homogeneously. Even though his plans to compile a Dictionary of Modern Greek were never accomplished, the data he collected in his work called Miscellanea (1825-1835), constitute the first attempt of a synchronic description of Modern Greek. As Frangoudaki (1992) points out, the compromise of Katharevoussa was the only viable solution for the language question at that time, with respect to the political goals of independence that the Greeks wanted to achieve. Indeed, Katharevoussa was recognised as the official language of the Independent Greek State in 1834, because it enjoyed the prestige of being close to the highly admired language of classic antiquity, thus underlying the new born nations ancient roots. The fact that the Modern Greek State defined its formation and marked its cohesion on the basis of a common national language, dating back in antiquity, categorises Greece as a linguistic state following Rustows patterns of state formation (Rustow, 1968 cited in Joseph 1987:47). The importance of linguistic matters and its relation to politics has been dominant and apparent in recent years, too (see below). The first dictionaries published under the independent state could not but follow the aforementioned ideology of purism (katharismos = purism, purification > Katharevoussa). The Dictionary of present day Greek dialect, compiled by Scarlatos

Vyzantios and published in 1835, included ancient and archaic words mostly. It was a trilingual dictionary whose definitions were given in ancient Greek and in a later edition in French as well. What is most striking about the purist ideology of its compiler, and reflects the predominant ideology of his time, is that the words of foreign origin, Turkish, Italian, Venetian or French, were all grouped aside from the main entries, in an Appendix under the title Foreign Words to be banned. For almost a century (1835-1933) no other important general-purpose dictionary of Modern Greek was publishediii, apparently due to the unstable linguistic situation of superposition provoked by the co-existence of the popular vernacular language (Demotic) and of the purist language (Katharevoussa). As a matter of fact, in the first decades after the Independence of the Greek State such a great linguistic variety in dialects and languages did exist, that it was almost impossible for originals of one place to communicate with those coming from another (Papatzikou-Cochran 1997, Liakos 1997)iv. It is from that time onwards that the language question caused heated conflicts in the Greek linguistic community, coinciding with the societys transition to the capitalist era towards the end of 19th century (Frangoudaki 1992).

THE DEMOTICIST MOVEMENT From the time of the establishment of the independent Greek State,
Katharevoussa prevailed in the language of administration, newspapers and education as the High variety (Ferguson 1959, Liakos 1996). Demotic was used in everyday spoken communication among equals and in the home, and enjoyed the covert prestige of the mother tongue. Soon it became noticeable that the idea of national revival would need to be replaced with the idea of national continuity (Liakos 1996: 79). An ethnographic purism (Thomas 1991), searching for vernacular words in folklore Greek tradition, and establishing relations with the Byzantine religious

tradition attempted to mark the continuity of Greek language, customs and traditions in the centuries dating from ancient times and going through medieval times. The literary production of the time was mostly influenced opting for an archaising and classical language, following the tradition of the western Romantic school for the revival of antiquity and the imitation of classical models. Nonetheless, it was in the literary field and particularly in poetry, that Demotic was initially favoured before entering the official registers of education, press and later on that of politics. The poets grouped around K. Palamas (1859-1943) were consciously and consistently using Demotic, contrary to the Romantic School poetry. Jean Psycharis (1854-1929) a Greek linguist, educated in Paris and professor at the Sorbonne, supported scientifically Demotic and promoted its use in literary prose as well. With his book called The journey, published in 1888 both a scientific treatise and a nationalist manifesto he established an extreme demoticist opposition to the purist tradition, adapting in an often unusual way Demotic phonological patterns to words of learned origin. This particular type of anti-purism (Thomas 1991) succeeded in initiating heated debates on the language question among scholars and in making a great impact on society. The language question from this point onwards began to bear explicit political and ideological connotations, which led the linguistic polarisation to coincide with the social and political groupings at the time. Demoticists represented economic and social progress, industrialisation, aggressive nationalism and educational reform (Frangoudaki 1992, Liakos 1996). Their agenda on educational matters and social reform shared a common ground with the Left political agenda. Purists, on the other hand, considered the demoticist movement a threat to the cohesion of the nation and a rebellious reaction against the political and social status quo. The violent and bloody

protests that broke out on the occasion of the translation of the Gospels and the aeschylian trilogy Oresteia into Demotic, in 1901 and 1903 respectively, illustrate eloquently the extent to which the language question stimulated political conflict and was instigated by it (Browning 1982, Alexiou 1982: 160, n.4). Even though Demotic was excluded from the 1911 Constitution, which explicitly named Katharevoussa as the official language of the State and forbade its falsification (Frangoudaki 1996), Demoticists began to work towards an Educational Reform in order to introduce Demotic in public schools. The foundation of the Philosophical School of the University of Thessaloniki in 1929 established the academic bulwark of the demoticist movement. Demotic began to be used in formal registers in parallel with Katharevoussa, producing latent messages of revolt and social unrest. In the next few decades the difference in the use between Demotic and Katharevoussa signified social distance and bore latent social messages of formality and seriousness. The consistent use and especially the mixture of purist elements in a Demotic discourse rendered the latter opaque, grandiloquent and superficially authoritative, identifying the speaker as an educated person (Setatos 1973, Frangoudaki 1997). Surprisingly, though, it was under the dictatorship of Colonel I. Metaxas (1936-1940) that the moderate demoticist, M. Triandafilidis, was commissioned to compile the first official grammar of Modern Greek-Demotic (Liakos 1996). Surely this act should be related to the populist profile the dictator wanted to project at that time (Frangoudaki 1992). During the Civil War period (1946-1949) Demotic was stigmatised as being typical of Communist discourse and progressive ideology, whereas Katharevoussa connoted respect for the traditional values of fatherhood, religion, and family. At the same time Katharevoussa was used, misused and practically abused by authorities and

politicians lacking real power and acknowledgement by the public, who wanted thus to mislead them. On the other hand, Demoticists attempts for educational reform succeeded in generalising the teaching of Demotic throughout primary and secondary education in parallel with Katharevoussa, under the 1964 Reform. The beneficial results were not left to prosper, because the military junta abrogated the law in 1967. The 1967 Dictatorship was the coup de grce for Katharevoussa (Joseph 1987). The misuse and abuse of its grandiloquence and opacity linked it to totalitarian politics, with which none wanted to identify after the collapse of junta in 1974 and the restoration of the democratic parliament. The 1976 Reform put an official end to diglossia without, however, guaranteeing the final act to the language problem. The release of authoritative dictionaries of Modern Greek from 1933 to 1967, which included Demotic forms together with more purist ones, shows that the process of standardisation was in progress. The L-variety was described in parallel with the Hvariety, reflecting thus the ongoing transitional period during which words of learned origin were still described in parallel with those of vernacular, popular origin. Those dictionaries would still use Katharevoussa as their lexicographical metalanguage and would be influenced by the purist tradition of the past in their attempt to relate Modern Greek vocabulary directly with Ancient Greek roots (Petrounias 1985, Anastassiadis 2000). Their standards were thus very low, with the exception of Proia: Dictionary of the Modern Greek Language, published in 1933. The dictionaries published after 1976 would still have recourse to the entries of the Proia dictionary, making only minor additions and going no further than actually translating its contents into Demotic.

THE SITUTATION FROM 1976 ONWARDS As Alexiou (1982) points out, the transition from Katharevoussa to Demotic
following the 1976 Reform was in no way a simple process. Greek speakers in their 50s and older are still nowadays confused whether to opt for Katharevoussa or for Demotic forms and end up making inconsistent and incorrect use of bothv. Almost all functions reserved for Katharevoussa, the H-variety before 1976, were now served by Demotic (Ferguson 1959, Alexiou 1982), with the exception of the church liturgies, the official communication of the Patriarchate, one extreme Right wing newspaper (Hestia) and particular registers in the Army Forces, Politics, Medicine, and Law. The above confused and confusing situation, and especially the first attempts to use Demotic in more formal registers (science, philosophy, political rhetoric) that lacked fluency, particularly during the first years right after the reform, brought forward the inadequacies of Demotic and gave an impression of poor language quality (Pavlidou 1991, Kakava 1997, Frangoudaki 1997). Right from the beginning there was a hot debate in the columns of daily newspapers as to whether the language should be described as Demotic, the vernacular code, which won the battle of the language question over Katharevoussa in 1976, or should be regarded as Common Modern Greek, which was a sort of Koine integrating both purist and Demotic elements into a new system (Alexiou 1982: 157, n.1). The advocates of the first position (Em. Kriaras, and professors of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki), referred to the past linguistic state using the term diglossia, whereas the principal advocate of the second position (G. Babiniotis, professor of Linguistics at Kapodistrian University of Athens) referred to it as dimorphia: two different forms of one and the same language, not two different codes or languages with distinct systems (Babiniotis 1978). Papatzikou-Cochran (1997:52) based on a short scale

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empirical research claims that present day language situation is neither diglossic nor dimorphic anymorevi. In March 1982 the foundation of the Hellenikos Glossikos Omilos [Greek Language Society] by Professor G. Babiniotis, was an overt reaction of Athens scholars and intellectualsvii to the impoverishment and decline of the Greek language (Babiniotis 1984, Pavlidou 1991). According to them (the Society published two volumes on Greek language, in 1984 and 1986), Greek was threatened by alteration of its Hellenic character and pidginisation [sic]viii due to the influx of foreign loanwords coming from British and American English (Frangoudaki 1992). The linguistic mythology of the endangered language was based on the partial observation of the poor and restricted vocabulary students used, and the inflexible (wooden) language of political parties (Frangoudaki 1997, Christidis 1999). The reason for this defective linguistic quality was supposed to be the cutting off from the ancient roots of the Greek language. The present dispute, like the one in the past, was mainly carried out between scholars from the two most important academic institutions, the Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki. In this dispute, the advocates of the decline theory of language argue for the uninterrupted, unique history and wealth of the Greek language, which bears 40 centuries of spoken and 35 centuries of written tradition. The remedy against the dehellenisation of Greek is the study of the history of language and its past periods (Ancient-Medieval-Purist) at school (see Pavlidou 1991). On the opposite side, scholars like Christidis (1996, 1999) and Frangoudaki (1992, 1997) explain that Modern Greek has drastically changed since Hellenistic Koine, which was its source,

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and that it is constantly undergoing a natural process of change and mutual exchange with other European languages in contact. The linguistic reasons for this debate lie on the fact that Greek, unlike Latin and other Indo-European languages did not break up in the course of its history into different languages (Christidis 1996). In addition, the various purist and regressive movements throughout its history have contributed to the maintenance of archaic elements and their resurrection from previous phases of the language (see above). The above, in conjunction with the particularity of Greek diglossia (see Alexiou 1982), according to which it was the L-variety and not the H-variety that was codified in a grammar book at a very early stageix and the one which was used as a literary language in poetry, have resulted in the present day situation. For some, the presence of purist or ancient loanwords in todays vocabulary is evidence for a diachronic relation of Modern to Ancient Greek, unique to this language (Babiniotis 1984, 1998:17-26). For others, this is a matter to be dealt with in the history of language and of no significance to the present use of the language or to its quality and prestige (Christidis 1999, Petrounias 2000). The social and political reasons for the aforementioned debate lie in the fact that Greek society is forced to present a modern and worthy image of itself in the face of the linguistic, and above all economic hegemonisms within the European Community, and with respect to the various threats coming from the North or the East. Some people choose to elaborate on the uniqueness of the Greek language, something, which adds to the nations coherence and superiority over our neighbours and co-members in Europe. Some others choose to accept the fact that Greek belongs to the small / weak languages of Europe, and try to demystify the past and elaborate

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both on the present contemporary state of language and on its contact with other neighbouring and/or weak languages (Frangoudaki 1997, Christidis 1996, 1999). The defining factor for the persistence of such phenomena within the Greek linguistic community, I believe, is the sensitivity about language matters expressed by the majority of Greeksx, as well as the fuzzy boundaries between the ideological and linguistic approaches attempted. This sensitivity in combination with the absence of a well-defined norm in Modern Greek is reflected in the lexicographical production of the last decades. The compilers of dictionaries are still at odds as to which purist loanwords to include in a descriptive dictionary of the synchronic state of Modern Greek and which archaisms to leave out (see Iordanidou 1996). Nonetheless, they end up being prescriptive and normative as to which words constitute the Modern Greek vocabulary, mostly on the basis of their personal standpoint and ideology, and due to the lack of an official and reliable Greek corpus.

II. THE DICTIONARIES It is under the circumstances and social context described above that the two most recent dictionaries of Modern Greek have been published. The DOMGL was published in May 1998 by the newly established Centre of Lexicography under the supervision of G. Babiniotis, Professor at Athens University, while the DOCMG was published in December 1998, by a team of lexicographers from the University of Thessalonikixi. Because of what happened in the time which elapsed between the two releasesxii, and with regard to the past relations of the two Institutions, the public and the critics consider the two dictionaries as being antagonistic. It is true that the DOMGL surprised the scholars and the public by its hasty release and anticipated that

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of DOCMG, which was long awaited since the pre-release of only a short sample of it in 1987, comprising only four letters (Institute of Modern Greek Studies 1987, see also Petrounias 2000, Anastassiadis 2000). In this part of my paper I will try to show to what extent the two dictionaries reflect two different and sometimes conflicting ideologies concerning language, by commenting on a limited but illustrative number of cases, regarding entries, stylistic labelling, morphological and phonological variability, etymology and spellingxiii.

Purpose: The purpose of a dictionary described in the Preface and Introductory Notes
gives a fairly good idea of the lexicographers intentions and the underlying ideology. It acts thus as a starting point for a comparison between what is proclaimed and what is actually practised further on, in a way that makes the lexicographers choices and judgements about language more salient. Overall, both dictionaries aspire to describe the synchronic state of the Greek language as comprehensively as possible, in order to satisfy the linguistic needs and curiosities of their users. The DOMGL introduces itself as a completely new and original dictionary, following the tradition of the previous authoritative dictionaries of Modern Greek (see also Appendix), and contemporary European ones, and yet going one step further. Its basic aim and contribution to the Greek language and society is to make the lexical wealth of contemporary Greek explicit, through the emphasis given on the depth, the extensive and the variable usage of words and phrasesxiv (p.13). It is the first dictionary ever to include usage notes and tables on various matters concerning language use. On p.27 the compiler states clearly that our concern was to collect all the vocabulary of Modern Greek that is in use today [], irrespective of origin purist, popular or foreign.

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On the other hand, the DOCMG introduces itself as the official State Dictionary compiled, though delayed, in response to the Ministry of Educations commission for a Dictionary of Modern Greek, in 1976 (p.ix). Its purpose stated in the Introduction to the profile of the Dictionary, is to describe the contemporary Modern Greek language as it is spoken by the average educated Greek in urban centres, as it is written in modern Greek prose and periodicals, as it is heard on the radio and on T.V. (p. xi). Their concern is to satisfy the present educational needs as well, by appealing to students, teachers and professors of Modern Greek, native or foreignersxv. DOCMG is thus a general-purpose language dictionary, neither a thesaurus nor an encyclopaedic one (Anastassiadis 2000). According to Ev. Petrounias (1997:792), the linguist who was in charge of the etymological information of the entries, the dictionary represents the linguistic variety of Common Modern Greek, with a bias towards the learned idiom within the linguistic community. On the contrary DOMGL is an encyclopaedic language dictionary, a reference book that includes a wide range of information on facts of usage of the words and their context of use in its broadest sense. It is noteworthy that whereas the compiler of DOMGL avoids any reference to his dictionary as an encyclopaedic one, his critics as well as the compilers of DOCMG deliberately underline its encyclopaedic features and character (see Anastassiadis 2000, Petrounias 2000). A telling example of their constitutive view on Greek language is their respective titlesxvi. The title Dictionary of Modern Greek Language implies that the dictionary aspires to describe the modern, synchronic state of Greek, regardless of dialects and registers (Petrounias 2000:86, n.18). The compiler himself exaggerates in stating that his dictionary includes all the words in use today (p.27). On the other

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hand, the Dictionary of Common Modern Greek opts for the term Common in order to imply that it deals with the variety of Modern Greek which is free of dialectical and idiomatic features. The choice of one name or the other hints to the compilers aspirations to standardise Modern Greek by simply describing and naming it Common or Standard Modern Greek, respectively.

The number of entries: Jackson & Z Amvela (2000) rightly note that the desire of dictionary
compilers is to maximise any count of their dictionarys contents. This is the case with DOMGL, which states right on the cover that it includes 150,000 wordsphrases, 500,000 meanings-uses. It is not clear though, whether the lexicographer counts references (all the words in bold typeface) or headwords. In the latter case, the actual number of proper linguistic entries, excluding the encyclopaedic ones, should be much lower. DOMGL includes names of places and people, abbreviations and ancient Greek and Latin phrases as main entries, something which considerably increases the total number. DOCMG includes approximately 80,000 references, around 50,000 headwords, without including any abbreviations or proper names. The compilers have moreover included prefixes, suffixes, and combining forms as headwords in a way that gives the reader a comprehensive idea of the compounding and derivational system of Modern Greek, something which is done in an ad hoc and inconsistent way in the DOMGL.

Collection of facts of usage: One of Barnharts criteria for the authority of a dictionary (1980: 34) is the
adequate collection of facts of usage. This point is related to the collection of a sizeable / adequate number of citations taken from a large corpus of texts that will

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provide the lexicographer with evidence about the meaning and the context of use of the words included in the dictionary (Jackson & Z Amvela 2000). With respect to the corpus and the usage examples / citations used for the compilation of each of the two dictionaries, both argue that they describe the vocabulary in present use, although they have made choices as to what words and how many from specific registers to include. The DOMGL has thus excluded words that are not in use any more, unlike other contemporary dictionaries, which misleadingly augment their entries by including such obsolete words. The DOCMG has included only the words that are in frequent use within the linguistic community, irrespective of their origin (learned or vernacular), granted that they are in use by the majority of speakers in urban centres. This was achieved more on the compilers consensus and sense of language than on the basis of an extended corpus (Petrounias 1985, 2000). The collection of facts of usage helps the lexicographer to decide on the frequency and commonness of use of one type, word or meaning rather than another. The question of linguistic corpus in Greek lexicography that could yield reliable information on such questions is a thorny matter (Goutsos et al. 1995). Up to the present time there is no large collection, electronic or otherxvii, of linguistic data, except for the extensive but outdated corpus of the Athens Academy, which has been compiled since 1933, for the publication of the Historical dictionary of Standard Modern Greek and of the Dialects (see Appendix). What most dictionary compilers do, is to collect usages and examples as they are found in previous dictionaries and reuse or modify them, something that the dictionaries in question also do to a lesser or greater extent.

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The DOMGL has collected utterances from everyday spoken or written language, proverbs, song lyrics and literary works and [sic] other linguistic sources (p.32). Apart from that, it made extensive use of the Lexicographical Archive of the Linguistics Library in Athens University, which was compiled in the 70s. The DOCMG on p.ix lists three sources from which the compilers drew their examples and usages a) from literature, b) from the press (editions, newspapers, magazines) and from the T.V. and radio, c) from the lexicographers own intuition. The dictionarys compilers have also used the extensive corpus of words and their usages as they are found in the corpus of the literature of 18th century onwards, offered by Professor L. Politis. One interesting comment to be made has to do with the fact that both dictionaries have recourse to literary texts, a lexicographical method that Kahane & Kahane (1967: 252-253) clearly consider inadequate not to mention misleading for the collection of lexicographical data.

Choice of vocabulary: When looking in detail into the entries of each dictionary, one may come
across words that have been included in the one but not in the other. It seems that the lexicographers intentions and personal choices determine the final selection of vocabulary, regardless of the evidence yielded by the collection of citations and facts of usage, and due to lack of any reliable and updated Greek corpus. Considering the aforementioned dispute over language in the past century and after the 1976 reform (see above), vocabulary has been affected the most and still bears the most salient traces of the diglossic past. The inclusion or not of obsolete, archaic words, words of learned origin, in a dictionary can thus betray the lexicographers standpoint. For example, such purist words as agelidon (in hordes), amitor (with no mother), anafandon (suddenly), anir (man), aroura (earth), dapsilis

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(abundant), ekpomastron (cork-screw), hemeis (we), hymeis (you, pl.), kalipigos (having well-shaped buttocks), kidome (take care of), kisostefis (ivy crowned), klitis (slope), kimvalizo (play the cymbals), kinoktonia (dog killing), lixo (leak), mitir (mother), mitrothen (from the mother), omilo (speak), oro (see), ostis (whoever), periago (draw round), perialifo (smear all over), periapton (charm, n.), periavgazo (illuminate), poliistor (very learned), pous (foot), rinomkatron (handkerchief), ripto (throw), talas (wretched), xamai (on the ground), xiroktio (gloves), and many more are included in the DOMGL but not in the DOCMG. But such words by no means could be considered as part of the synchronic vocabulary of standard Modern Greek, and thus included in such a dictionaryxviii. On the other hand, it is true that the DOMGL includes more foreign loanwords and neologisms than the DOCMG does. Words like bras-de-fer, beatnik, manager+Greek Verb ending, globalisation (loan.transl), rap (music), rockabilly, snack, skateboard, tabloid are included in the DOMGL but not in the DOCMG. The latter includes words like yuppie, manager, management .., which are also included in the DOMGL. This is clearly an attempt of the compilers of the DOMGL to be seen as up-to-date by including recently coined words, without however checking first on their frequency of use and popularity among the speakers. It excludes however other foreign loanwords, like limit-up, crash test, new wave. Nonetheless, the fact that the compiler uses cross references to Greek origin words in his attempt to propose the Greek equivalents for foreign loanwords such as management, goal, scanner, tanker, press conference, multimedia, internet, interview, debraillage, ascenseur, etc. is a practice, which illustrates in a certain way the prescriptive tendencies of the particular

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dictionary. For the same entries, the DOCMG uses no cross-references between the two entries. Overall, the fact that the DOMGL chooses to include tables and usage notes concerning the rules, which apply when using the ancient Greek accent marks (polytonic system), the aspirated wordsxix, and conjugates the personal pronouns of Modern Greek in parallel with those of Ancient Greek, presents from my point of view, a fuzzy image of what really is Modern Greek and what not. The compiler presents the linguistic information on the entries and the notes in a diachronic continuum, without clearly distinguishing the boundaries between Attic, Hellenistic, Medieval, Purist and Modern Greek illustrating thus his thesis on the uninterrupted history of Greek language (see above). On the basis of the above evidence one could then argue that the object of description, that is Modern Greek, is ill defined in the DOMGL.

Stylistic Labelling: With regard to the stylistic labelling of the entries in both dictionaries, one
attests a high degree of disagreement in the categorisation of words and their context of use. It strikes me as odd to come across the category label: arxaioprepes (archaic) as a comment for the use of words like: pediothen (from a child), amitor (with no mother), vroxidon (unceasingly), in a dictionary of Modern Greek like DOMGL. The DOCMG uses the label: logio / aparxaiomeno (learned / obsolete) instead, for words that both dictionaries include and which the DOMGL describes as archaic, such as hemteros (ours), kyon (dog), oikos (house), pas (everybody). The description of Greek vocabulary in its present state becomes even more obscured and confusing when the reader comes across words labelled arxaios ancient in the DOMGL: aroura (earth, ground), anir (man), kissostefis (ivy

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crowned), perialifo (smear all over). There are even some cases presumably due to oversight where there is no stylistic labelling at all for words used admittedly only in purist and formal or obsolete contexts, like: drys (oak), dyname (be strong enough), isxys (strength), periskelida (leg-band), pilos (a close fitting cap), giras (old age). There seems to be confusion over the learned origin of a word and its use in a purist/learned/formal context. It should be noted that for the history of Greek vocabulary a word that is of learned origin is not necessarily used in a learned / formal context at present (Petrounias 1985:398). The origin of words is dealt in the etymology section of the entry, whereas the style and context of use of a word is part of the main entry, and it is a valuable source of information for the user (Jackson & Z Amvela 2000). Both dictionaries use a long list of labellings in order to define the context for each entry. DOMGL uses rather fuzzy criteria in order to determine what the difference among archaic, rare and purist is. DOCMG on the contrary clearly states its policy and agenda in determining the origin and use of words (see Petrounias 1985). There are however cases where the labelling is not consistent in the DOCMG either, especially with regard to the feminine names of nouns referring to professions. Overall, DOMGL attempts to validate the presence and synchronic use of more purist types than the DOCMG does. It is important to note here that the DOCMG includes a lot of purist types too also included in the DOMGL something which attests the fact that elements of learned origin have irreversibly been incorporated into Modern Greek vocabulary over the years. The lexicographers seem to opt for words that they estimate that the speakers use in their everyday communicative interactions or suggest that they should use, rather than words that the speakers actually utter.

21

Phonology - Morphology: On the level of phonology and morphology the two dictionaries present a
conflicting image as to what linguistic types are still used, and which ones are more common than others are. I believe that both dictionaries end up following a prescriptive rather than descriptive approach, emanating from their different standpoints on language and their wish to put an order to the rather complex present morphological system of Greek. For example, in the phonological system of Katharevoussa, consonant clusters with two fricatives like [s
db dhqb drrvphyvurirtvvtvur

middle of words. However, in Demotic, they were replaced, through the process of
qvvvyhviurpivhvshsvphvrhqhyvruhvbsdb dhqb

sk]

respectively (Browning 1983). With this in mind, the description of the actual practice and the deliberate choices of the two dictionaries reveals quite a lot about their respective ideologies. The DOMGL puts the [s
db dhqb dhvhiyrsvurv

includes the phonological doublet, whereas the DOCMG does exactly the opposite: fthano-ftano (arrive), fthinos~ftinos (cheap), xthes~xtes (yesterday)xx, sxrara~skara (grill), sxizo~skizo (tear). Which of the two variables is more frequent could only be decided on the basis of a corpus frequency indexxxi. Another typical consonant cluster in Katharevoussa consisted of two plosives like [pt] and [kt], which were replaced in Demotic, according to the dissimilation
prvbsdhqb drrpvry)

vaptizo~vaftizo (christen), epta~efta

(seven), okto~oxto (eight). The DOMGL puts the Katharevoussa variables first, followed by the Demotic ones. In cases where both dictionaries accept the same order in presenting the phonological doublets, on the ground of their frequency, the DOMGL chooses to label one or the other type. When the purist type is presented first, the Demotic type is labelled as popular, colloquial, whereas when the Demotic

22

type is presented first, the purist type is labelled as more purist. In all cases, the DOCMG presents the doublets with no labelling of either type. There are even cases where the DOMGL chooses to present both variables, while the DOCMG has only one, the Demotic, and most frequent nixterinos~(nikterinos) (nocturne), xtena~ (ktena) (comb), xtipos~(ktipos) (beat)xxii. By assigning to one of the two variables a stylistic use, the DOMGL chooses to delimit its use to a particular style, and thus marginalise it, rather than completely eradicate it, something which still falls within purist and prescriptive practice (Thomas 1991). The same applies to the morphological variables of nouns and verbs. The DOMGL gives ad hoc morphological information about the conjugation of nouns and verbs, whereas the DOCMG includes in an Appendix the conjugation tables of nouns, adjectives and verbs (pp.1515-1532). The DOMGL chooses to indicate the purist forms of some nouns, by including them as sub-entries in the dictionary. It thus gives the alternative forms of nouns, labelled as more purist or simply purist like: vasilias, GEN. vasileos, *NOM.vasileus (king) // erotideas *NOM. erotideus (young Eros) // hegemonas *NOM. hegemoon (one who leads) // presvyopas *NOM. presvyops (long sighted). The DOCMG does not include these doublets at all, since their purist endings have been morphologically transformed into Demotic ones, thus: -eus > -eas or >-ias, -oon > -onas, etc. (see also Browning 1983). Morphological doublets can still be found in the verb system, too, mainly for the endings of the past passive: -sth- instead of st, -xth- instead of xt-, -fth- instead of ft- and V+thi- instead of V+ti-. Those consonant clusters with a fricative are purist ones. It is not easy to claim which of the two types is more frequent among speakers, unless the lexicographer has indeed recourse to an electronic corpus of Greek, which would provide one with frequency listsxxiii. At present, the choices of the two

23

dictionaries are based on the compilers consensus. The DOMGL generally tends to give the purist ending together with the Demotic one, whereas the DOCMG opts for the latter. DOMGL gives the alternative purist forms of the past passive of the verbs kataskevazome > kataskevastika & (purist) kataskevasthikaxxiv // aspazome > aspastika & (purist) aspasthika, but not for verbs like xriazome and onomazome, supposedly on the basis of the informal register those verbs belong to. In reality this is a matter to be defined on the basis of empirical research and corpus analysis, which is lacking in both dictionaries. DOCMG opts for an overgeneralised preponderance of the Demotic endings regardless of the register, becoming thus prescriptive at this point. For the verbs isxirizome and embistevome the DOCMG gives only Demotic endings isxiristika and embisteftika, whereas the DOMGL gives the purist ones too isxiristhika and embistefthika, labelling them as suchxxv. Overall, the differences of the two dictionaries on the morphological level are not as many and as representative of their respective ideologies, as differences on phonology are.

Etymology: Even if the etymology of words is irrelevant to the functioning of the

vocabulary in a language, as Jackson & Z Amvela (2000) maintain, it can still betray the lexicographers intention to prove and verify the rootedness and historicity of a particular language (Gallardo 1980). This has been the case of past dictionaries, evaluated by Petrounias (1985), where the origins of Greek words were directly traced back to Ancient Greek and no foreign loanwords would easily be recognised as such. Overall, the etymology was heavily based on orthography and exclusively on the form of words (Petrounias 1985, 1997).

24

Apart from a large number of words that have directly been inherited through the popular tradition, dating from Hellenistic Era (inherited words), there is an even larger number of words that have been coined in modern times under the learned / purist tradition. These words were the product of extensive borrowing, either from internal resources in an attempt to accommodate new meanings coming from abroad by expanding the meaning of ancient words that were thus reintroduced into the modern vocabulary (semantic borrowing), or from external resources by translating foreign words in Greek, and concealing thus the foreign nationality of the lender language (loan translations). The case of loan translations in Modern Greek is even more complicated because the original foreign word translated in Greek could have been an internationalism initially coined abroad on the basis of Greek and/or Latin elements, thus giving an Ancient Greek outward appearance, but in reality being a foreign word introduced to Modern Greek (Petrounias 1997). Internationalisms like: athlitismos (athletics), anthropologia (anthropology), komounismos (communism), mikrovio (microbe), pragmatologia (pragmatics), sosialismos (socialism), are described in the etymology section of the DOMGL as Greek origin foreign words or the rendering of a foreign word in Greek. This practice obscures their true foreign origin and makes no reference to the learned origin of those words, unlike the practice followed in the DOCMG that ascribes them directly to the foreign lender language, usually French or English. The same happens with semantic borrowings like: eknevrizo (irritate), enthima (infix), efimerida (newspaper), kathikon (duty), kendro (centre). The DOMGL gives the reader the false impression that these words and their meanings come directly from Ancient Greek by relating them to the ancient form of the word and going even

25

further to do a morphological analysis of it within the Ancient Greek system, disregarding completely the change of its meaning over the centuries. With regard to loan translations, both the DOMGL and the DOCMG, unlike other previous dictionaries, attribute rightly the origin of words like: akoustiko (<earphone), diavatirio (<passport), kinoniologia (<sociology), ouranoksistis (<skyscraper), politismos (<civilisation), to loan translation (Petrounias 1985, 2000). At the same time, however, the DOCMG takes many more words than DOCMG does, to be Rckwanderungen, that is Greek origin words that foreign languages borrowed through the medium of Latin and later on were reintroduced into Greek again, usually with a different form and meaningxxvi. For example the DOMGL takes words like: ambari (container), varka (boat), galotsa (galoshes), jambon (ham), penalti (penalty), to originate in Ancient Greek words, something which the DOCMG does not accept and simply attributes them to a foreign lender language. Another feature of the etymology section in the DOMGL is that it traces the history of words back to its ultimate root in the Indo-European language and gives cognates of it in other related languagesxxvii. This is presumably done in accordance with the lexicographers thesis on the continuity and diachronic unity of the Greek language (see above, and Frangoudaki 1997). As a matter of fact, the lexicographer ends up confusing the reader about the description and history of Modern Greek. The DOCMG states right from the start (pp.xxi-xxii) that the extent of the etymological history of Modern Greek vocabulary should not go any further than the Hellenistic period, from which Modern Greek originates (Petrounias 1985, Christidis 1996). The etymologies of the DOCMG prove that the purist tradition of the past century was allegedly trying to purify Greek from foreignisms, but in reality ended up borrowing foreign words or their meaning and concealing their true origin under an

26

ancient Greek formxxviii. At the same time, the dictionary acknowledges the learned origin of a great number of words which nowadays are part of the Modern Greek vocabulary and can either be formally or informally used in everyday interaction. Moreover, the DOCMG succeeds in comprehensively informing the reader on the derivational and combining mechanisms and rules of Modern Greek, by including prefixes, suffixes and combining forms as headwords in the dictionary. The DOMGL, on the other hand, does so to a less extent and sometimes gives the reader the false impression that the phonological and morphological system of Modern Greek is haphazard and fuzzy having recourse to that of Ancient Greek.

Spelling: Another level on which purism and prescription can easily be traced is the
orthography of words. Greek, bearing a long tradition that can be traced back to antiquity, has inevitably undergone changes in its phonological system that resulted in a gap between the way words are spelled and the way they are pronounced. Even though there have been attempts to simplify the orthography of some words since the orthographic reform in 1982, which abolished the previous accentual marking system, there exists a large majority of scholars and intellectuals who are still using it. The compiler of the DOMGL proposes for a large number of words a different spelling from the one which has already been established among the members of the linguistic community in the name of homogeneity and etymological rightness (Kalioris 1998). Following the ancient root and etymology of the words, he opts for a spelling that retains their etymological origin / idol, an etymologically motivated orthography which relates them directly to their ancient cognates: glykYsma vs. glykIsma, lEIanos vs. lIanos, etcxxix.

27

The DOCMG accepts the spelling of words as prescribed in the Grammar of Modern Greek Demotic by Triandafilidis (1941), except for minor deviations. It opts for a more simplified historic orthography and for a simplified spelling of Rckwanderungen that have been reintroduced to Modern Greek through the popular tradition, except for those that have been introduced through the learned tradition, and thus retain their historic spelling. In the DOCMG the former are spelled in a simplified way, thus garIfaLo, goMa, kaNela, tsIrOto, whereas the DOMGL chooses to spell them in a way that follows their ancient Greek cognates, thus garYfaLLo, goMMA, kaNNela, tsErOOto. This choice is related to the DOMGL compilers attempt to trace ancient Greek origins to a larger number of words than what the DOCMG accepts (see above). As far as foreign loanwords are concerned, overall, both dictionaries agree on a simplified orthography, closer to the phonetic rather than the foreign spelling. Foreign loanwords like train and style are therefore spelled treno instead of traino and stil instead of styl.

FINAL REMARKS The overall impression, concerning the choice of entries included and the
alternative types given, is that the variety and richness that the DOCMG tries to describe lies in the different registers and styles, whereas the variety which the DOMGL sets to describe is more historically directed, either towards the past of Greek language or towards the future, by including words in current use that might only temporarily last. The DOMGL tries to give an up-to-date description of Modern Greek by including a large number of neologisms and foreign words that have only recently been introduced and whose viability is doubtful. At the same time, the lexicographer

28

manifests and underlines in every possible way through the choice of vocabulary, the information provided on the morphology and etymology of words the continuous, uninterrupted and unique history of Greek, without however clearly distinguishing Ancient from Hellenistic and Medieval period. The DOCMG following its programmatic statements ends up being more a prescriptive than a purely descriptive dictionary of Modern Greek, accepting for example the Demotic endings for the majority of words, instead of the purist ones. At the same time, the DOCMG, to the surprise of some radical demoticists, acknowledges the presence of words of learned origin within the present Modern Greek vocabulary. According to Gallardo (1980: 61) the function of dictionaries is twofold: reflection of the characteristic way in which a language has been standardised and at the same time the influence of this process. The compilation of a dictionary of Modern Greek is no more a question of describing two co-existing codes, which reflect the social, political and ideological standpoints of their speakers. It is rather a matter of setting out to describe the Modern Greek vocabulary and its morphophonological variables that co-exist, and ultimately to describe the exact context of use and level of formality for each word. Granted that the two recently published dictionaries are claimed to be the most authoritative and comprehensive ones since 1976, it is quite revealing to remark that their compilers have reached a different consensus concerning the origin of words constituting the Modern Greek vocabulary, their morphological doublets and their use. This proves that Greek is still under a process of standardisation and that the two dictionaries attempt to affect and in some way or another lead this standardisation process: the DOMGL by describing Greek as a language that bears 4,000 years of uninterrupted history and thus fears no foreign linguistic imperialisms; the DOCMG

29

by describing Greek as a standard language that inevitably inherited a number of words of learned origin in the process of its constitution as a standard language since Hellenistic times. Finally, the fact that some critics of the DOMGL would have expected it to include more purist words in use today and even to use the older accentuation system (see Kalioris 1998), and that those of the DOCMG commented on the dictionarys tolerance to words of learned origin, indicates that the dictionary-buying public and therefore the speakers of a language have expectations which might reflect a completely different attitude towards the present day linguistic situation. The speakers expectations about, and attitudes towards the language they speak and use should ultimately be taken seriously into account for the compilation of a contemporary dictionary. To this respect, the use of an extended electronic corpus of Modern Greek could be of great value for the description of the present linguistic situation.

CONCLUSION Even though the existence of a dictionary in and of itself is not normally sufficient for the designation of a language as standard, as Joseph puts it (1987: 72), it is obvious from this paper that the two lexicographers intended to influence the standardisation process of Greek. Nonetheless, they proceeded from opposite starting points. The DOMGL being more prescriptive than it programmatically stated, adopts a purist tolerance, whereas the DOCMG chooses to simply record the existing variables, with a bias towards the Demotic morphology and phonology however, thus being prescriptive, too, in its own terms.

30

The two institutes behind the dictionaries have engaged in a public dispute on language in the years following the 1976/1982 reforms as well as in the past. They were thus expected to reflect their views in their respective dictionaries. To a certain extent I believe that they stood up for their respective ideologies, but they were forced to make compromises taking the present situation seriously into account as this is defined by the real use of language among the speakers. As a consequence, the DOMGL has included far more neologisms and foreignisms than the DOCMG has, even though its compiler has criticised the low standards of language spoken by teenagers and has argued against the allegedly high number of foreign words, mostly English, colonising Greek (Babiniotis 1984) in the past. He, nonetheless, follows a lexical purism targeting loanwords and internationalisms, either by proposing the Greek equivalent next to the foreign entry or by obscuring the foreign origin of loan translations of learned origin in the etymology section. The DOCMG takes a rational stand acknowledging the presence of purist words in use today as well as the learned origin of a large number of words, something which radical demoticists of the past would be reluctant to accept. At the same time, the dictionary coming from the same institute that released the official State Grammar of Modern Greek (Demotic) by M. Triandafilidis, some 50 years ago, chooses therefore to follow almost without deviation the orthographic principles set in it, and attempts to establish the Demotic morphology as the norm among the speakers. Their almost simultaneous publication confirms that the Greek linguistic community is no more diglossic, in the sense of the Fergusonian term (Ferguson 1959), but at the same time indicates a maturing need for standardisation.

31

RE FERE NCES Alexiou M. (1982) Diglossia in Greece, in Haas W. (Ed.), 156-192. Alissandratos G. (1980) Modern Greek Dictionaries: a brief description, Diavazo, 32: 26-36 (Part 1) & 34: 30-44 (Part 2). Anastassiadis A. (2000) The Dictionary of Standard/Common Modern Greek: planning-contribution-use, in The Teaching of Modern Greek, 5th annual symposium, 47-56. [in Greek] Babiniotis G. (1978) Beyond Katharevoussa and Demotic in Dimotiki Glossa, 149158. Athens: Grigoris. [in Greek] Babiniotis G. (1984) Modern Greek language: Concern, carelessness and hyperprotection, in Hellenikos Glossikos Omilos, Greek Language, Vol.1. Athens: Kardamista. [in Greek] Babiniotis G. (1998) Lexiko tis Neas Hellenikis Glossas [Dictionary of Modern Greek Language]. Athens: Kendro Lexicologias. Barnhart C.L. (1980) What makes a dictionary authoritative, in Zgusta L. (Ed.), 3342. Browning R. (1982) Greek Diglossia yesterday and today, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 35: 49-68. Browning R. (1983) Medieval and Modern Greek. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Christidis A.Ph. (1996) The Modern Greek Language and its History, in The Greek language, 71-74. Christidis A.Ph. (1999) Language, Politics, Culture. Athens: Polis. [in Greek] Coulmas F. (Ed.) (1991) A language policy for the European Community: Prospects and Quandaries. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Evangelatos S. (Ed.) (1990) D.K. Vyzantios: Babylonia. Athens: Hermes. [in Greek] Ferguson C.A. (1959) Diglossia, Word, 15: 325-340. Frangoudaki A. (1992) Diglossia and the present language situation in Greece: A sociological approach to the interpretation of diglossia and some hypotheses on todays linguistic reality, Language in Society, 21: 365-381. Frangoudaki A. (1996) On Greek Diglossia: the ideological determinants of a longstanding social conflict over language, in The Greek language, 83-89.

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Frangoudaki A. (1997) The metalinguistic prophesy on the decline of the Greek language: its social function as the expression of a crisis in Greek national identity, in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 126: 63-82. Gallardo A. (1980) Dictionaries and the standardization process, in Zgusta L. (Ed.), 59-69. Goutsos D., Philip K., Chadjidaki R. (1995) The use of corpus in the lexicography and description of Modern Greek, in Studies in Greek Linguistics, 16th annual meeting, 843-854. [in Greek] Haas W. (Ed.) (1982) Standard languages: spoken and written. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Householder F.W. & Saporta S. (Eds.) (1967) Problems in Lexicography. Indiana University. Hudson R. (1988) The Linguistic Foundations for Lexical Research and Dictionary Design, in International Journal of Lexicography, 1: 287-312. Institute of Modern Greek Studies (Manolis Triandafilidis Foundation) (1987) Lexiko tis Neas Ellinikis Glossas. 9vthaC
Db9vpvhsHqrBrrx

Language. Specimen ZHTH]. Thessaloniki. Institute of Modern Greek Studies (Manolis Triandafilidis Foundation) (1998) Lexiko tis Kinis Neoellinikis [Dictionary of Common Modern Greek]. Thessaloniki: Ziti Publishers. Iordanidou A. (1996) Standard Common Modern Greek: an attempt to define it, in Strong and Weak languages in the EU: Aspects of linguistic hegemonism. Proceedings, 139-147. [in Greek] Jackson H. & Z Amvela E. (2000) Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: an introduction to modern English Lexicography. London: Cassell. Jospeh J.E. (1987) Eloquence and Power: the rise of language standards and standard languages. London: Francis Pinter. Kahane H. & Kahane R. (1967) Problems in Greek Lexicography, in Householder F.W. & Saporta S. (Eds.), 249-262. Kakava Chr. (1997) Sociolinguistics and Modern Greek: past, current, and future directions, in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 126: 5-32. Kalioris G.M. (1998) Babiniotis Dictionary, Nea Estia, 1706: 1056-1082. [in Greek]

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Liakos A. (1996) Language and History in Modern Greece, in The Greek language, 75-82. Mikros G., Gavrielidou M., Lambropoulou P., Doukas G. (1996) Xthes or xtes? A quantitative study of phonetic and morphological elements in Modern Greek texts, in Studies in Greek Linguistics, 16th annual meeting, 645-656. [in Greek] Papatzikou-Cochran, E. (1997) An instance of triglossia? Codeswitching as evidence for the present state of Greeces language question, in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 126: 33-62. Pavlidou Th. (1991) Linguistic Nationalism and European Community: The case of Greece, in Coulmas F. (Ed.), 279-289. Petrounias E. (1985) The dictionaries of Modern Greek, their etymologies, and the etymologies of the Dictionary of the Triantafyllides Institute, in Studies in Greek Linguistics, 307-416. [in Greek] Petrounias E. (1997) Loan Translations and the Etymologies of Modern Greek, in Greek Linguistics 95, Salzburg, 791-801. Petrounias E. (2000) The peculiarities of Modern Greek etymology, in The Teaching of Modern Greek, 5th annual symposium, 57-89. [in Greek] Setatos M. (1973) Phenomenology of Katharevoussa Greek, Epistimoniki Epetirida Philosophikis Scholis Panepistimiou Thessalonikis, 12: 43-80. [in Greek] The Greek Language (1996) Trilingual Edition (Greek-English-French) of the Ministry of National Education and Religions. Athens. Thomas G. (1991) Linguistic Purism. London: Longman. Triandafilidis M. (1941) Modern Greek (Demotic) Grammar. Athens: Organismos Ekdoseos Didaktikon Vivlion. [in Greek] Zgusta L. (Ed.) (1980) Theory and method in lexicography: western and non-western perspectives. Columbia, S.C.: Hornbeam.

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APPENDIX MODERN GREEK DICTIONARIES

1635 1659 1688 1709 1835 1900 1931 1933 1933 1936 1952 1962 1967 1967 1970 1970 1978 1985 1989 1995 1997 1998 1998

Latin Modern and Ancient Greek Dictionary, Simon Portius (Paris) Thesaurus of encyclopaedic base in four languages: Greek Latin Italian French, Jerasimos Vlachos (Venice) Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Graecitatis, 2 vols., Charles du Cange (Leiden) Tesoro della lingua Greca-volgare ed Italiana, cioe ricchissimo Dizzionario Greco-volgare et Italiano, Alessio da Somavera (Paris) Dictionary of present day Greek dialect, translated into Ancient Greek and French, Scarlatos Vyzantios (Athens) Collection of scholarly new words created from 1453 up to our time, 2 vols., Step. Koumanoudis (Athens) Synonyms and Word Families, P. Vlastos (Athens) Historical Dictionary of Standard Modern Greek and of the Dialects, Academy of Athens: Centre for the Historical Dictionary (Athens) Proia: Dictionary of the Modern Greek Language, G. Zevgolis et al. (Athens) Great Dictionary of the Whole Greek Language, 9 vols., D. Dimitrakos (Ed.) (Athens) Dictionary of the Modern Greek Language: Katharevoussa and Demotic, 3 vols., I. Stamatakos (Athens) Reverse or Onomastic Dictionary of Modern Greek, Th. Vostandzoglou (Athens) Etymological Dictionary of Standard Modern Greek. Second Editon, N. Andriotis (Thessaloniki) Reverse Dictionary of Modern Greek, G. Kourmoulis (Athens) Abridged Dictionary of Demotic Language, K. Stergiopoulos (Athens) Dictionary of Synonyms of Modern Greek, K. Dagitsis (Athens) Large Dictionary of the Modern Greek Language, A. Georgopapadakos et al. (Athens) Hyperlexicon of the Modern Greek Language, 6 vols. Pagoulatou (Ed) (Athens) Greek Dictionary, Tegopoulos-Fytrakis (Eds.) (Athens) Modern Greek Dictionary: Dictionary of contemporary Demotic Language, E. Kriaras (Athens) Major Greek Dictionary, Tegopoulos-Fytrakis (Eds.) (Athens) Dictionary of Modern Greek Language, G. Babiniotis (Athens) Dictionary of Common Modern Greek, Manolis Triandafilidis Foundation (Thessaloniki)

NOTES
All the information concerning modern Greek dictionaries is based on an article in two parts by G.Alissandratos (1980) and on the Lexicographical Appendix on Dictionaries of Modern Greek by G. Babiniotis (1998) included in his Dictionary, pp.2033-2064. ii See Papatzikou-Cochran 1997:56, n.16 for the linguistic parties and their actual political power. iii Except for two specialised dictionaries by Koumanoudis and Vlastos, see Appendix. iv A theatre play entitled Babylonia, written in 1836 by D.K. Vyzantios was making fun of the linguistic situation at that time (Evangelatos 1990), presenting characters originating from Peloponnese, Chios, Crete, Cyprus and Asia Minor who could not understand each other and ended up fighting due to a misunderstanding. v Alexiou (1982: 172) uses an imaginary example of the linguistic development of an average student from a northern provincial town, born in 1952, who graduated from the University in 1974, to show the cognitive implications of diglossia. vi The question what is the language we speak toady? has recently reappeared in 1999 newspaper articles by the same advocates of the two positions on the occasion of the release of the two dictionaries. vii Among the members of the Society were Nobel Prize poet O. Elytis, the writer G. Chimonas and the painter N. Chadjikiriakos-Ghikas. viii This emotive term was used in its non-technical sense by G. Babiniotis in his papers on the nature of Greek language and its alleged threat by the influx of foreignisms, published by the Greek Language Society in 1984 and 1986. See Christidis (1999) for a critique. ix The first Grammar of Modern Greek was the Grammar of the Common Language of Greeks, written by N. Sofianos, from Corfu, and published in 1870. Katharevoussa has never been codified or described as such in any grammar book. It was through the use of grammar books of the Ancient Greek Attic dialect that it was taught at school. x One such massive expression of concern about language was the public discussion on language, organised by the Greek Communist Parties in a stadium on 19th January 1985, which was attended by more than 3,500 people! xi Both dictionaries have been reprinted, the DOMGL in July 1998, and the DOCMG in March 1999, with only minor corrections that do not affect the validity of the points made in this paper. xii The compiler of the DOMGL was accused and brought to trial because the inclusion of the definition of the word Boulgaros = Bulgarian, with its pejorative and abusive usage as an insult for the supporters of a football team from Thessaloniki, was considered as racist and offensive by the majority of Northerners and fans of the team. He agreed to withdraw the above entry from the second print of his dictionary, which appeared in July 1998. xiii I have chosen these categories from Hudsons checklist (1988 cited in Jackson & Amvela (2000)). Overall I have heavily drawn the structuring of this part and the points to comment on from the final chapter in Jackson & Z Amvela (2000). xiv The translation of the extracts from the Preface of both dictionaries cited in this paper is my own. xv It is the only monolingual dictionary of Modern Greek that gives a phonetic transcription of the entries (see Petrounias 1985, Anastassiadis 2000). xvi It has always been a problem to translate Koine Neohellenike or Neohellenike Koine in English (see also Papatzikou-Cochran 1997:52). To opt for the term Common Modern Greek would either refer to the variety of Greek spoken in urban centres, unaffected by dialectisms and special registers (Petrounias 2000), or imply a synthesis of the two previous codes, that is Demotic and Katharevoussa, in a new one (Babiniotis 1978). The term Standard Modern Greek used by Browning (1982) presupposes the existence of a truly and fully standardised code, which apparently is not yet the case for Greek. In this paper I chose the term Common Modern Greek for the title of the Dictionary published by Triandafilidis Institute because this is the way its compilers translate the term in papers published in English (see Petrounias 1997). xvii In the last couple of years the first attempts to compile electronic corpora of Modern Greek accessible on the Internet have been made by the Institute of Speech and Language Processing, in Athens (www.corpus.ilsp.gr) and by the Centre for Greek Language, in Thessaloniki (www.komvos.edu.gr). In certain cases below (see the Phonology-Morphology section), I make only a partial use of the HNC by ILSP in order to support my claims or check the claims of the lexicographers against the real use of language. xviii I have looked up for the English translation of these words in the on-line Greek-English Dictionary by Liddel-Scott-Jones at the Pesreus Project on Antiquity web site (www.perseus.tufts.edu).
i

All these accentual marks (sharp~heavy accent, circumflex and smooth~rough/aspirate breathing) were abolished under the 1982 law, in favour of the monotonic (one accent) accentuation system. Nonetheless, one can still nowadays come across books, newspapers and magazines which keep using the polytonic typeface. xx The Hellenic National Corpus of 13,000,000 words by ILSP proves that fthinos is more frequent than ftinos (750 vs. 193), and xthes much more frequent than xtes (5283 vs. 112), whereas it shows that ftano is a little more frequent than fthano (3482 vs. 3456). xxi A recent study of the distribution of consonant clusters in Modern Greek written texts proved that there is a consonant variability which reflects the stylistic variability of text types (Mikros et al. 1996). However, the Demotic consonant clusters seem to be more frequent. xxii Indeed the HNC shows that the variables of the word given in parenthesis are non-existent in Modern Greek. xxiii The quantitative study by Mikros et al. (1996) concluded that the Demotic consonant clusters are by far more frequent in the case of Past Passive. xxiv For this particular verb the search in the HNC showed that the st- form appears 266 times whereas the sth- only 140 out of a total of 1625. xxv The corpus search proves that the purist form of the past passive of the verb isxirizome appears only 64 times against 91 of the demotic one, whereas the purist form of embistevome is more frequent than the Demotic one! xxvi See for example the origin of words like aria < ital.aria <AG aer, diamandi <ital. diamante < AG adamas andos, palavra <span.jew palavra <Lat. parabola <AG parabole. xxvii This is not the case for all the entries. In fact, there are some entries that have no etymology information, unlike the compilers statement in the preface (p.34) that all the entries have their etymologies given. Sometimes the lexicographer gives only a chronological indication of the first appearance of the word in Greek, which is not reliable; in fact it is questioned by other linguists. xxviii See for example the case of the replacement of the word familia for the Greek looking word oikogeneia in Petrounias (1997). The former is a direct loan from Latin familia dating from Hellenistic times, which has been used ever since. The latter is a loan translation of the 19th century of the Italian famiglia, coined on the basis of the Hellenistic Greek word oikogeneia < oikos + genos which meant however certificate of origin of a homebred slave! xxix He even proposes the spelling pleMMyra for the word tide instead of pleMyra following the false etymology of the word in ancient Greek and disregarding the fact that the word was correctly spelled with one m later on during Hellenistic age and thoughout medieval times! In the reprint of his dictionary the lexicographer gives the established orthography of those words in parenthesis, under the label school orthography.

xix

This brief list was compiled according to the information I collected from Alissandratos (1980), The Geek Language (1996) and Babiniotis (1998). Only those specialised dictionaries (etymological, synonyms etc.) are included, which were the first to be published for Modern Greek.